This past weekend, I attended my sister’s graduation ceremony at the University of Michigan, where President Barack Obama delivered the commencement address.

The Ann Arbor ceremony included a variety of speeches welcoming the students, their families and the president. Some speeches were inspiring, others were congratulatory and most contained a good deal of school spirit. (Being a Buckeye myself, hearing “Go Blue” shouted by our president particularly stung.)

More than 200 years ago, Virginia was the most powerful state in the fledgling United States of America, spawning visionary leaders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

How times have changed in the Old Dominion.

Instead of leaders such as Jefferson and Madison, who fought state-established religion and labored to bring full religious liberty to all, Virginia’s government today is saddled with a collection of ideologues who kowtow to the Religious Right and constantly seek to fan the flames of the “culture war.”